Ogives/Slogives by Harvey Valdes

In early 2024 I came across Satie's Ogives and was instantly taken with their calm, meditative qualities. An ogive is the curve that forms the outline of a pointed gothic arch, and it is rumored that Satie took his inspiration from the ogives within the Notre Dame Cathedral. Composed in the late 1880s, he wanted to evoke a large pipe organ reverberating in the depth of a cathedral, and achieved this sonority by using full harmonies, octave doubling, and sharply contrasting dynamics.  I was so drawn to their elegant balance of simplicity and complexity that I began to perform the pieces at solo guitar concerts.

After playing them for some time on guitar, I discovered that they fit even better on lap steel, as it added another sonic color to the pieces. Then, the lap steel gave way to the pedal steel, and the Ogives were the first pieces I played on it. Processing the pedal steel with reverb and glitch effects along with the steel's capability to bend and sustain chords, I quickly created the sonic world I believed these pieces could live in. This became my take on Satie's Ogives.

Slogives is a companion interpretation of the Ogives that intentionally nods to Satie’s status as a significant, early influencer of minimalist and ambient music. Played much slower, the pedal steel is processed with a very long reverb decay that becomes another voice on top. The melodies and harmonies bleed into each other and create another harmonic layer. In the Slogives, I imagine what Satie’s Ogives would sound like if they were played in a heavily reverberated cathedral where the audience was sitting at the top arch of a cathedral as the sound emerged from below.

harveyvaldes.com